[clug] Has Ubuntu resulted in a decline of Linux distribution innovation

[David Schoen]

I would say more likely a decline in diversity rather than innovation
but it's probably hard to measure unless someone has stats on new
projects and project forks.

On a personal level, I made the switch from Gentoo to Ubuntu around 2
years ago and I've noticed lots of innovative things appearing still.
I'm still trying out lots of weird new programs and basically in the
same way (configure, make, make install).

On a broader level there still seems to be plenty of innovation...
compare KDE 3 and 4, or OpenOffice 2 and 3 and lots of cool new stuff
in ext4 to see just how innovative at least some groups of people can
still be.

In my opinion reducing diversity is actually a really good thing (as
long as it is still _possible_ to choose something else). Choices
scare the crap out of people! To quote the Handbook "Gentoo is all
about choices". There's always a chance you'll make the wrong choice
and we all seem to assume instinctively that we won't get a chance to
make that choice again.

Not scaring off people is a really good thing, but I'm pretty sure as
long it is still possible (and bare in mind we're talking FOSS so it
shouldn't ever not be possible) people will replace components on
their machines that are shiney in whole new ways and we will continue
to have innovation.

- Dave

2009/6/18 Karun Dambiec <karun at linux.com>:
> Given that Ubuntu has become one of the most popular distributions, do
> you think it has resulted in a decline of innovation between
> distributions?
>
> Alternatives like Gentoo, etc appear to be gradually disappearing.
> --
>  Karun Dambiec
>  karun at linux.com
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